Adjustment Period
by SolarRose29
Summary: How do you cope with coming back to life?


This was inspired by watching the extended version of the scene at the end of Captain America: First Avenger. In that version, Fury introduces himself as colonel, Cap asks how he survived the crash (Fury says they don't know but they suspect it was the serum), and if they won the war. Fury tells him they did, but that there's still soldier's work to be done and there's a place for Cap in the world.

If you haven't seen it and you're curious, just youtube 'extended scene: Steve Rogers meets Nick Fury' 

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The men in the big black suits (not Hydra) keep away the crowds while Col. Fury ushers him into a huge black car. He sits down and the car jolts forward, shoving its way through the cramped streets. The colonel keeps up a commentary, pointing at all the giant spinning flashing lights and the buildings like fists blocking the sky, but he doesn't listen. Not much. They drive back the way he ran. Within minutes (what are minutes compared to decades?) the car spits them out in front of the door before speeding off. Col. Fury leads the way back inside, teeth gleaming like polished steel when he smiles. Steve's passed off to the lady he first woke to. She looks up from the fingernails she was inspecting and an overly friendly expression replaces the bland disinterest that used to reside on her painted lips.

She holds out a hand and introduces herself as Mildred. He doubts that's her real name. He tells her as much and her hand drops as she admits to the name Tara. He's never heard that name before and wonders if it's a first or last name. She asks if he's hungry and he doesn't know. He probably should be. Seventy years is a long time without food. But he doesn't feel hungry. Just empty.

They give him an apartment. They give him clothes. They give him a computer and a microwave oven and a credit card and access to the library and then they leave. He sits in the living room and listens to the loud city through the closed windows and wonders at the breath going in and out of his lungs. He remembers crashing. He remembers pointing the nose of the airship down, remembers the way the ground rushed up at him, remembers the water flooding the cockpit, remembers gagging choking spitting dying. Remembers the sound of Peggy's voice, the tears in her words, the promise that felt like goodbye. He remembers Stark. And Philips. And Dugan, Jones, Falsworth, Morita, Dernier. He remembers Bucky and hears him scream and maybe he screams too. Or maybe he doesn't. There's no one there to tell him if he did.

Colonel Fury drops by one afternoon. He brings a thick file and a sharp assessing gaze. Fury moves through the rooms like he's been there before and that doesn't surprise Steve. Fury helps himself to a cup of coffee and one of the wooden chairs at the little table. He makes small talk, asks big questions, and leaves a phone number for when Steve's ready. After the door shuts behind the director, he picks up the folder. There are many pages, some corners sticking out, begging to be read. He holds it in his hands, hefting its weight, gauging the amount of information in it, knows he's holding history, his past. And sets it down on the counter so he won't drip coffee on it when he takes the seat Fury vacated.

He barely makes it to the library. The trip alone nearly exhausts him. So much to see, so much to smell, so much to hear. Buses to catch, metros to ride, roads to walk. People to pass. People who rush by, caught up in their own lives, with their own schedules to keep. People who push past him, their sleeves catching on his, their shoulders bumping his. Sometimes their fingers brush his fingers. He finally gets to the library, carefully folding up the paper with the directions on it and placing that in his pocket. It was a tiring journey but the destination is worse. There's too much. Too much to read, to learn, to absorb. He missed it all-science, technology, politics, entertainment. It's overwhelming and he has to brace his hands on a bookshelf as he calms himself and decides to start from the beginning. He'll take it decade by decade, starting in the forties, where he left off.

He reads and drinks coffee and sometimes catches a few hours of sleep when he isn't staring at the ceiling, processing information from the mountain of library books collecting on the kitchen table. Occasionally, he walks the streets. He's never gotten lost, serum enhanced memory ensures that. He's pretty sure he never sees the same person twice. There are over eight million people living in New York now. And not a single one of them knows who he is. No one knows his name, no one calls him by it. No one knows that he's alive. That he isn't dead, even though he should be.

The number Fury gave him is still on the table. The man notices so when he drops by again after eight weeks. He asks how Steve's getting along, how the captain's catching up, how he's adjusting. Steve doesn't feel like talking, but he can't ignore a commanding officer. He can't lie either. He tells Fury that he's been reading. The piles of library books are his witnesses. Fury nods and pulls out a briefcase with shiny disks in it. He shows him how to load them into the untouched laptop computer. Steve stays up through the late hours of the night and into the early hours of the morning going through them. They're sort of like the newsreels before the cartoons.

He made a routine a few weeks after he was first moved into the apartment. The routine helps. A little. Now, he just adds in the gym Fury recommended. And that helps a little more. It feels good. It feels right. It feels right to punch and hit and smash his fists into the sandbags. To bathe himself in his own salty sweat. Until the memories that taunt him and the wishes that plague him and the guilt that drowns him fade from harsh reality into a painful ache in the secret parts of his mind.


End file.
